Turns out it's not as easy as Batman makes it look.

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Having examined a variety of sources on alleged pacifistic successes of first-millennium popes, the facts are ambiguous at best and antithetical to our hopes at worst.

As the legend goes, Pope Leo the Great stopped Attila the Hun’s siege of Rome merely by going to meet the military leader, warning him of the intercession of Saints Paul and Peter that might befall him if he carried out the attack, and leaving Attila fearful and unwilling to defy divine power. The Encyclopedia Britannica, paraphrased here, provides context to the story that would lead even one taking it at face value to the conclusion that more pressing factors dissuaded Attila than an appeal to mercy. The Hun army was already exhausted at the time, particularly after the Battle of Châlons, and Rome’s recent famine made it an unworthy investment for plundering. Ancient historian Don Keko concurs, adding that Rome had already suffered an attack that satiated the Huns with gold, about twenty years before Pope Leo’s meeting. If papal words of peace did anything to defend Rome, they piggybacked on circumstance and took place at a suboptimal time — why not attempt diplomacy during the Huns’ first pillage?

Gregorythe Great fares little better. To be sure, his many charitable contributions can be granted, even ignoring for the sake of relevance the violent measures he endorsed for conversion of heretics (a moral error in a person’s character, however egregious, says nothing about the nature of pacifism itself). These sources nonetheless admit that Gregory’s peace with the Lombards, the act of peaceful resistance in question, was “on-and-off” and “fragile.” I could belabor the details, but even if we could demonstrate this to be an indisputable example of effective peacemaking, the theory of pacifism as a consistently powerful force for conflict resolution without the level of violence typical warfare demands would require more than a single exhibit. That, if nothing else, is what we can take from this admittedly sparse day of research: one case does not a reliable theory make, and stories purported to support an ideology may have a more complex history that nullifies their validity as evidence for that ideology. This only scratches the surface, as I have not begun to touch the matter of nuclear weapons, which deserves a post unto itself.

The promised digression on Martin Luther King may or may not come soon. Again, the arms race warrants discussion in this series as well, and it’s likely that I will postpone updates to Giving Peace a Chance until after more extensive reading and thought than is feasible within a few days, or even weeks. I didn’t expect to solve the problem of world peace willy-nilly, yet I hope these posts so far have underscored the importance of patience, meticulousness, and acceptance of uncertainty in the enterprise of applied ethics. Anyone who tries to sell you the answer to this debate in a sentence or in a single anecdote is, I am sure we can agree in our sober moments, being too rash. That does not mean we cannot make progress at all, but it does remind us to take each part of the whole endeavor — in this case, determining whether nonviolent conflict resolution on large international scales is almost always the best option — as proportionally significant.

If you have any resources to recommend on this subject, such as books or documentaries, feel free to suggest them in a comment.

For the majority of my life as someone capable of understanding violence, I failed to see the point of pacifism in its most serious, ambitious sense. Granted, most of us would prefer not to have to resort to bloodshed, and if it did prove necessary we would be better off not taking pleasure in it, yet World War II always seemed a strong counterexample to following John Lennon’s suggestion. I would tell myself I had no objections in principle to society utilizing force to achieve what was truly a greater good. Those who scoffed at “the ends justify the means” only did so because they disapproved of certain ends caused by the means, thereby unwittingly proving that point.

I suspect at least a significant number of readers who affirm the above stance do so, reasonably enough, because pacifism’s spokespeople have not tended to maintain a respectable track record of practicality. The stock pacifist justification for refusing to fight even in self-defense is that of Harry Potter, for whose unwavering nonviolence to the point of risking more lives Lupin scolds him. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” “Why show people killing is unacceptable in society by killing them?”, and other such appeals to moral outrage derail the conversation before it can make any meaningful progress.

Meanwhile, the prominent voice for defensive violence fares no better in critical thinking. It has its own soundbites: “Don’t tread on me,” “Think of the children,” and all species of “They deserve it” rationales. If the error of strict pacifism is that it elevates a maxim (don’t kill no matter what) above victims’ lives, the sin of its opposite is a cruel disregard of the nuances of human psychology. A part of the pacifist thesis worth considering is that showing society’s aggressors the strength of our commitment to peace may, far from revealing exploitable weakness, give them reason to respect and even trust us. The skeptics have mostly ignored this.

Our goal, then, ought to be the transcending of these tunnel-vision biases. The most responsible replacement of dogmatic bumper-sticker policies is rational deliberation on the facts relevant to that which we value. Should it seem as if abandoning our hollow rationalizations for positions on this issue makes the task dauntingly complicated, we know we are doing something right, because if what we aim to optimize are real consequences for people’s well-being, we should afford care to thought that is proportional to the uncertainty of those consequences.

This should be common sense, but particularly in the domain of the ethics of violence, we have the all-too-human tendency to forget that what appears to be “cold logic” is the very instrument of justice Alan Turing used to assist the Allies’ victory over the Axis. Neither purely emotional nor exclusively rational means comprise the whole of ethical judgment, as Spock must have some value-based purpose to think for, and McCoy must have a system of discerning better ways to achieve what he values than others.

None of which settles the peace debate proper, you surely protest. We’ll come to that in time, although if we do this responsibly, the conclusion we reach will never be unduly certain, especially when history has never been in short supply of wrong answers. For today, I hope I have stressed the importance of method, lest the garbage put in become garbage out. Naturally, what I present here can never be totally free from its blind spots, yet we should — as people who, remember, desire a common vision in the most significant sense — find little controversial about the notion that identifying and interpreting the facts is better than talking past each other.

In Part II, we’ll consider what history can tell us about what best deters violence, in both the short- and long-term.

I expect the name of this blog to elicit one of three reactions. The first is scoffing dismissal at its audacity: “Gee, here’s another naive kid thinking he can make a difference. What a hack! Moving on…” The second is curiosity: “Gee, I was just wondering how one might go about the massive task of saving the world. What a potentially valuable resource, my cynical doubts notwithstanding! Moving on to the actual website…”

The last is outrage at the idea that I might actually be selling snake-oil to dummies, who think reading my patented manifesto on world peace (endorsed by the Dalai Lama) could protect the Amazon rainforest.

Suffice it to say, if you fall into the first niche of people, feel free to spend your time more wisely, as I am sure your life includes priorities above reading the word-vomit of a teenager on social justice. Seriously. For those of you more gullible hopeful folk who sincerely share my goal of at least trying to make sense of this complex, imperfect world, and who figure you might as well embark on your journey of stupid idealism with a soul-buddy on the Internet, welcome!

Naturally, you will have your reservations. Really, what do I know about improving society? The most honest answer I can muster is, not much more than the average person. Yet. The first warning I can give you to make this project more worthwhile for all of us is that you ought never take this blog to be the web edition of Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save. I am not Gandhi. You will doubtless find people more valuable to the world than I am. If you feel so inclined, read my updates as if they were journal entries from the pen of a young person, aiming for nothing more or less than the expansion of his scope and depth of social consciousness.

That said, I can promise you, most patient reader who I am amazed has stayed with me this long, that in the annals of this blog you will never hear echoes of Lisa Simpson. I intend zero condescension, judgmentalism, self-righteousness, or pretension to know or do things I do not actually know or do. One virtue of this blog that I hope shines through is that it will never propose anything impractical for the majority of people with a shred of desire to make the world a better place. As one of the laziest people I know, I assure you that if, over the course of this endeavor, I find myself capable of saving a tree, then you most certainly can do so too. Chances are I will not get that far, thus I refuse to demand that everyone else match my imaginary moral superiority, lest you appear a despicable apathetic pig in my eyes.

If this sounds pessimistic of me, note that never in this essay have I stated that I will not try, or that no one else should try. Success in this project looks something like this: regardless of whether I earn the Nobel Peace Prize, I will have made the most authentic effort possible to think critically about the issues surrounding the extent to which I, you, and society can actualize the values we share (at least, that I hope we share). Bonus points if someone else finds these musings of mine somewhat thought-provoking.

So, now that we have dispelled any unreasonable expectations for this blog’s content — both positive and negative — let me explain what sorts of topics I may cover throughout my blogger’s career, before you leave thinking this site is pointless. “Saving the world” is basically the same in my mind as in anyone else’s; it’s the details that need sorting out. Most of us desire a society, or multiple coexisting societies, in which every person’s potential to pursue happiness with liberty is maximized. The debates over the means to that end could fill a nation’s worth of libraries, encompassing everything from personal ethics to large-scale politics.

To keep this blog ever on track, I swear to abide by this constant principle: If it has little relevance to the well-being of you or other conscious creatures, it has no right to any bandwidth here. Within the limits of that maxim, be you a passionate feminist or an enemy of malaria, there’s bound to be something of interest to you here if you are still reading this. The most powerful asset in our hands, as people discontent with the status quo, is determination. Apathy tends to shrink when you purposefully hold yourself accountable to others who keep ubiquitous tabs on you, saying to their fellows, “Who wants to start the bidding on how long this New Year’s Resolution will last?” That is the main reason I chose to start this blog.